Oxygen, 48" x 60", 2010, acrylic & ink on wood panel

Hi everyone. Happy New Year! Sorry I’ve been out of touch. Working working working…

Here’s a painting I just finished. Also, I’ve started a fan page on Facebook for David Palmer Studio. If you’re on FB, stop by for a visit!

In part, this reluctance has to do with various coming home challenges — burst pipes, unreliable contractors, relatives using the house in unexpected and unnerving ways. But in part, it’s simply because I don’t know what I did, although I am fairly certain I did not manage to un-orient, and my feeble attempts merely feel like they may be so feeble as to look feeble-minded.

Well, you see where I am. I began last February and March, 2009, living with the desert and Beatty, Nevada, painting small masonite panels, getting to know the territory and its inhabitants. This November sojourn, however, was more limited and almost entirely devoted to the Amargosa, which became more and more fascinating as I spent 6-8 hours a day, alone with the scene, for the full month of November.

So here are photos of the seven panels, plus the full panorama. These were taken as the panels were still on the wall of the Red Barn, under under limited lighting conditions. The exception is the full panorama, which was lit andphotographed by professional photographer, David Lancaster.

I am showing these in part to bolster my own sense of dignity and/or bravado.

Unoriented Amargosa (panel 1, east), 4′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa (panel 2, east), 4′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa (panel 3, east), 4′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa (panel 4, central), 4′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa (panel 5, west), 4′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa (panel 6, west), 4′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009

Unoriented Amargosa (panel 7,west), 4′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009

Let me assure you that I’m not looking for compliments. Sympathy maybe, but not false reassurances <snort>

What I will be working out this winter, I believe, is the nature of the horizontal. How much of it can be conveyed, how much of it needs color to work, what scale makes the power and fearful nature of the horizontal apparent? What media can be both intriguing and yet horizontal? How do verticals interrupt the horizontal and are they the only way to convey a sense of space?The problems of scale, color, and vertical interruptions are predominate in my mind as I try sussing out where I need to start.

You see, I’m already to start a new set of propositions, without having the courage to deal with the old. But only out of the old could come the new, so it’s probably OK.

And just for laughs, I’m also including the photo that David Lancaster, the professional photographer on the Goldwell Open Air Museum Board, took of me. It was taken in the waning sun hours, and David had a strobe light that allowed him to photograph me from below, directly in front of the sun. The strobe filled the front space, so I wasn’t just a silhouette. I kept hoping something similar could be done with the mountains, which required an extraordinary amount of vigilance to catch some relief, some sense of form and shape on as they were mostly just silhouettes against the desert sky. It was also David Lancaster who photographed the whole of the panorama,  pictured below:

Unoriented Amargosa Panorama, 28′ x 5′, oil on linen, 2009 (photo by David Lancaster)

JOU, December, 2009. Take that, Universe!

Rackstraw Downes  Mixed Use Field on Texas Coast, 1987, oil on canvas on board, 11 x 58 inches

As someone soon to be facing how to paint a large desert sky spread across a large desert panorama, I’m circling the question of the possibilities available.* The Goldwell Foundation, where I’ll be painting,locates itself physically near Beatty, Nevada, on the northwest region of the Basin and Range country, 8 miles and one mountain range from Death Valley. I’ve done lots of small studies there. Now I’m contemplating the Big One. Desultorily contemplating…..

I have no theories, only pictures.

Turner  Landscape with Distant River and Bay
c. 1840-50; Oil on canvas, 94 x 124 cm

Richard Wilson, On Hounslow Heath,  14 . 5″ x 18″,  circa 1770

Turner Sun Setting over a Lake
c. 1840,  Oil on canvas, 91 x 122.5 cm

John Constable, The  Stour Valley from Highham, c. 1804, Oil on canvas

A.Y. Jackson Terre Sauvage, 1913, oil on canvas, 50 x 60″

Lawren Harris, From the North Shore, Lake Superior,1923 or 1927 Oil on Canvas

Emily Carr (cropped by Underwood) Vanquished, 1931, original: 92 x 129 cnm

And then there are the photographers. I got waylaid, distracted, stopped and muddled by the plethora, so I only include two. A number so small as to be silly. I suspect that Steve could provide me with innumerable sky photos just by turning on his computer –

Roland Lee, Yucca Skies Chosen for its desert reference.

Ian Parker, Light Beam (Iceland), chosen for its stylized photography — the illusion of a painting.

“Morgan” from a student work, on a London Educational web site, chosen because it’s so eccentric.

There are thousands, possibly millions, more paintings and photographs of skies, ranging from the most subtle to the most outlandish, from the dabs of the impressionists through the stylish swerves of the Candians to the symbols of students. Photographers love skies; ordinary people love skies. Everyone has opinions about skies. Even the desert has skies, skies that can be far more interesting than the skies that I love in Portland Oregon. (Well, sometimes I love them; sometimes they are just gray).

I think the sky I’m envisioning will have to both blend and change, across the 25 or so feet of the panorama. I think it will have to signify different things — time of day, weather, potentials. I think it will have to be interesting, but void-like. It will have to signify “sky” but be one with the desert below.  It will have to be interesting. It will have to say distance and potential and sublimity. Small challenges.

It’s less than a month before I get to work on this itch, this desert panorama, and and so this is one way to spend the intervening weeks.

*For those not following my obsessions, I will return to the Red Barn at the Goldwell Foundation, at the head of the Amargosa Plain, to work on three to five (?) 4 x 5′ vertically oriented canvases, arranged in a panorama, in November and early December. I will be keeping a journal of that time on another blog. Stay tuned.

I just read a blog entry (dated August 17) by Jenny Bowker, who is an art colleague who works in quilted textiles. She tackled the same kind of landscape and had the same kind of hopes about what she might evoke, with some additions that the Amargosa doesn’t have: the presence of a handsome driver and some marvelous land forms. Her blog entry, which finishes with the photo of her textile work, is worth reading for sheer pleasure. But it makes me somewhat nervous about my ambitions.

Here’s the photo of Jenny’s artwork, which won a prize at the Canberra quilt exhibit and, I’m sure, will be seen often at other places around the globe.

Jenny Bowker, Sandstorm over the White Desert, about life size (see her blog entry for scale)

And here is an photo or two of what I will be facing, again

As I said, my desert has no handsome male to feature (although I might dredge one up in Beatty who would fill the bill.) But what I want to project is not so much the beautiful (although I find the Nevada desert is that) nor the humanity (found that appealing too), but the sheer power of the space, with each of its plants having a room of its own, and each fence post and road being a distinct presence:

I have the conundrum (I do love conundrums) of wanting to evoke the sense of space by using space, in this case, using a fairly tall (5 feet) and very long, horizontal canvas, filled. But filled how, with what — what will convey this space without sending the viewer into yawns of despair. (An aside: if you’ve ever driven Nevada over Highway 50, the loneliest highway in the US so-called, you know about yawns of despair).

I would like the painting to require the viewer to walk past it slowly, never quite being able to hold it in her vision all at once. I wouldn’t even mind a taller version, but fear I can’t handle anything over 5 feet tall. For one thing, we have to get back to Portland after a month, so the canvases will have to roll and fit into the Honda. But beyond that, I’m not sure I have the strength to carry off anything much bigger.

A textile piece that I’m envisioning would be smaller, I think, more like 1 foot by 5 feet. Still the 1 to 5 ratio, which I think may be about right. It would still require some movement on the part of the viewer’s head, if not the body, to take in the whole.

And of course, I will be thinking about Rackstraw Downes and various questions of perspective as I work up the painting and textile piece, trying to do work that is fresh to the eye and true to my seeing. There are human artifacts on the Amargosa, including a large talus pile and pond, roads and tracks, and fence posts and telephone poles, many no longer in use. So the vastness of the space has some human presence, but mostly marked by what was there but is no longer. Even the gold mine that made the talus slope is long gone.

What is there that is thrilling is the light that changes from minute to minute, changing what the eye can make out as well as the colors of land forms and hunks of bushes (the red car in the photo above is our Honda, coming toward the Barn studio, with the talus slope in the background.)

I’m hoping the conundrums will sort themselves out when I’m on site. Maybe they will — or maybe I’ll change my puzzles.

Have you faced difficulties of wanting to evoke something that might not be in your power to manage, but refusing to give in to the easier ways? I’m always fighting my stubborn ambition which can come up against unflinching reality. In which case, I give way. But not without a great fuss.

So here’s an update.

After a long struggle with health and painting, I’ve finally revived and have been painting the landscapes of the Willamette Valley in western Oregon. The change of venue from the wild and awesome desert to the gentle scenery of the Valley was fairly traumatic and also the cause (I think; I hope) of some really bad paintings, now discarded. But I’ve kept a few and think I may be able to tolerate the pretty landscapes and conventional views to which I’ve been subjected. (I’m engaged with a group of plein air artists who always choose not to paint the snarky or sardonic.)

The paintings imaged below have been done since the end of June. The first four (through the Storm) were attempts to provide a sense of expansion outward rather than focusing into the painting. This outward away from the center is what I feel the desert does, and I thought painting sky and/or water might keep me in touch with that expansion of space so essential to desert painting.

Morning Fog in the Gorge, 12 x 16″, Oil on board, 2009

Sailboat on the Mighty Columbia, 12 x 16″, Oil on board, 2009

Oak Island on Sauvies Island, 18 x 24″, Oil on board, 2009

Storm over Sauvies Island, 12 x 16″, Oil on board, 2009

Then, I spent four days last week in Vancouver, BC (Canada) and chanced upon an exhibit of Emily Carr drawings at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

I’ve long been a fan of Carr, although she was very poor andpainted on brown paper with oils thinned with gasoline. The original paintings are almost always a disappointment because they have deteriorated over the years.

However, the Vancouver exhibit was of her drawings, and frankly I was stunned by them. (I had gone to the Gallery to see an exhibit of 17th century Dutch paintings, which were quite exquisite, but none of them stunned me). I returned to Portland to the centennial celebration of a pleasant park on an extinct volcano in my neighborhood. It’s fairly large, almost entirely treed, with some very distant vistas and three reservoirs. Before I went to Vancouver, I thought painting Mt. Tabor was a challenge I was likely to fail to meet. I was reduced, prior to last week, to painting gates:

Salmon Street Gate, Mt Tabor, 12 x 16″, Oil on board, 2009

And pictures of the “mountain” from a distance, with lots of city flotsam:

Mt Tabor from Hawthorne and 28th, 12 x 16″, Oil on board, 2009

(There’s another, larger, version of this which I think is better, but haven’t photographed yet)

However, after seeing the Carr drawings, on Saturday I tackled the forest that is Mt. Tabor’s proudest achievement:

In honor of the Mt Tabor Centennial 1, Oil on board, 12 x 16″, 2009 (draft1)

In Honor of the Mt Tabor Centennial 2, 12 x 16″, Oil on board, 2009

And among the gentle conventional landscapes, I managed a few Underwood whacks:

Bonneville Artifacts, Columbia Gorge, 12 x 15″, Oil on board, 2009

And before I took on the gentility, I did some plein air city work, which seems more like my old self:

The East Branch, Portland Public Library, North Side, 12 x 16″, Oil on board, 2009

The East Branch, Portland Public Library, West Side, 12 x 16″, 2009

The East Branch, Portland Public Library, South Side, 18 x 24″, Oil on board, 2009

The East Branch, Portland Public Library, East Side, 18 x 24″, 2009

I did another painting of the front (the north side) of this building from a photograph, mostly so I could paint (and hence capture in my brain) the front of the building minus the trees. The East Branch of the Portland Public Library was built in 1911 by a locally prominent architect who also built the central library, which is still in use and still quite magnificent. The east branch has fallen onto lesser times, having its large open central hall (a requirement of all Carnegie funded libraries) divided into two floors. Only the rear rotunda, truncated to make a very strange room, was left intact.  The paintings were done from awkward spaces — the last from the edge of a parking lot that bordered on a plaid pantry; the first in a parking lot next to a cement block commercial building. The south side shows the rear of the library behind the Coffee Systems company, also in a cement block building. Two major streets, 11th and Morrison, border the block on which the library stands and to its east is the Rimskykorseykoffee House, which resembles a haunted bordello.

All this is to say that while I was placed by my group in gentle breezes and loving landscapes, when I could I escaped to my natural milieu, the snarky somewhat sardonic city in which I really live. I even am thinking of doing one of my wild studio composites with that wonderful ironic ex-library.

And how are you spending your summer creativities? Snarky or genteel? Admiring the river as it rolls by or watching the semi’s, rolling toward the center city?

Jer and I are, god willin’ and the crick don’t rise, returning to the desert, to Beatty Nevada, in November, for another go at the Amargosa Playa. I have notions that have nothing to do with comfort and pleasing vistas. Although the vistas of the desert are, in my perception if not my art, very pleasing.

Running Free by Angela Ferreira

Title: Running Free
Size: 102×127 cm
Medium: Oil on canvas

I just visited the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where I saw, among other things, a couple of Rothko paintings and a Barnett Newman. Maybe that’s why this installment of the continuing Yellowstone day is more colorful than previous ones (see parts one and two).

I stopped at a favorite spot along the upper Gibbon river, where it’s really just a creek. The snowbanks through which it meandered, diminishing daily with warming temperatures, appear to be only a meter deep. But to reach them from the road would have entailed passing across much deeper snow–a serious obstacle in spring when it is too soft to support me on either snowshoes or skis. Fortunately, there were a few gaps in the trees that afforded adequate views.

The images are similar to the natural abstracts I photographed elsewhere last year. Partly for that reason, I decided to do something different. With Messrs. Rothko and Newman in mind, I converted the black-to-white scale of values to a red-to-dark-blue scale.

Below are the black and white versions of the last two.

I am guilty, perhaps, of over-compensating, of going from too weak to too strong. But what’s a little exaggeration among friends? Don’t you ever over-do it on purpose, either for effect or experiment?